Springfield race riot of 1908

The Springfield race riot of 1908 was a violent, racially motivated uprising that played out in Springfield, Illinois, on August 14–15, 1908, and resulted in widespread property destruction and several deaths. After a young white woman accused an African American man of raping her, an angry mob bent on vengeance marched to the local jail with the intention of killing the alleged rapist and another black man who was said to have murdered a white man the previous month. However, when it was revealed that the accused men had been moved to a jail in another town for their safety, the members of the mob took out their frustrations on the city's African American neighborhoods, damaging property and destroying homes and businesses. As the riot unfolded, a number of people, both black and white, were killed. The Springfield race riot came to be seen as one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history.

Background

Although it may not have seemed that Springfield was on the verge of a major race riot in August 1908, the state of race relations in the community was as tenuous as it was in many other American cities in the early twentieth century. With a population of about forty-seven thousand people, Springfield, the state capital of Illinois, was a typical Midwestern city with a thriving mixed economy built on coal mining, manufacturing, and transportation. It was also a city with a growing African American population. While some historians propose that competition for jobs between white and black workers was the main contributing factor to the city's racial tensions, records show that such competition may have been minimal and that blacks may have kept out of most good manufacturing and transportation jobs. The most competitive area of employment was coal mining, which was open to blacks and whites alike. Otherwise, most of Springfield's black residents found work doing menial jobs such as waiting tables and shining shoes.

As was the case in many other American cities at the time, African Americans in Springfield lived predominantly in a number of black neighborhoods that gradually emerged in different parts of the city. One of the largest of these neighborhoods was the Badlands, a downtown district that was home to both the large majority of Springfield's poorest blacks and many of the city's saloons and gambling dens. In the early 1900s, however, a small number of blacks began to move into other neighborhoods. This was most notably the case in the Levee, another downtown district that stretched for several blocks and housed many restaurants, shops, and saloons. After a number of black businesses opened in part of the Levee, a small number of poor black residents began renting the surrounding apartment spaces. In the Levee, these poor blacks were far more visible than ever before—something that may have been unsettling to the city's white residents.

At the same time that Springfield's black community was beginning to take a more prominent place in the city, another quickly escalating problem was reaching a boiling point. Widespread political corruption tied to the city's saloons was enabling rampant vice and a general sense of lawlessness that, combined with growing racial tensions, was poised to cause a catastrophe in the city.

Overview

Escalating racial tensions and the threat of an outburst of violence came to a head on the night of August 14, 1908. The previous day, a young white woman named Mabel Hallam claimed that she was raped by an African American man. At the time, such allegations frequently incited violent responses from enraged whites that often led to the accused black men being lynched, or killed. Soon after Hallam arrived at the local courthouse to identify her alleged assailant, a crowd of angry citizens assembled outside. In the courtroom, Hallam reluctantly identified George Richardson, a black construction worker, as her alleged rapist. Richardson was immediately taken into custody and escorted to a nearby jail with the increasingly rowdy crowd following in suit. Hoping to avoid a deadly mob scene at the jail and protect his prisoner, Sheriff Charles Werner decided the best way to diffuse the situation would be to move Richardson to another jail in Bloomington, Illinois, which was almost sixty miles away. To facilitate this plan, Werner asked local restaurant owner Harry Loper to drive Richardson to a waiting train that would take him to Bloomington. When Loper arrived, Werner faked a fire alarm to distract the crowd and snuck Richardson down a back alley and into Loper's car.

Along with Richardson, Loper also transported Joe James, a young black man also being targeted by the mob. James had recently been accused of killing a white man, although it was unclear whether or not he actually committed the crime. James and Richardson were secretly escorted out of the Springfield jail and driven by Loper to the waiting train. They eventually made it to safety in Bloomington. Back in Springfield, however, the worst was yet to come. When the mob later learned that Richardson and James had been moved to Bloomington, the enraged rioters proceeded to Loper's restaurant and destroyed both the establishment itself and the car Loper used in the suspects' transport. From there, the rioters headed downtown and began attacking African American–owned businesses, ransacking stores, breaking windows and doors, and otherwise wreaking havoc. Finally, the mob moved to and destroyed the Badlands.

The next day, the rioters reassembled and attempted to enter the state arsenal in hopes of getting their hands on the hundreds of blacks who fled to safety there the night before. Turned back by state troopers, the mob went to one of the city's white neighborhoods and attacked and killed William Donnegan, an elderly black man who lived there. His was the second such death of the riot. The previous night, rioters beat and killed Scott Burton, a black barber who served white clients. After Donnegan's death, troops arrived in Springfield to quell the violence, although sporadic attacks on black citizens continued throughout the month.

The 1908 race riots took a heavy toll on the city of Springfield. In total, at least six people were killed and hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of property damage was sustained. Worse yet was the damage the riot did to the city's reputation. Around the country, newspapers printed stories that portrayed Springfield as a city where corruption, hate, and violence ran amok. The city's reputation suffered even further when Mabel Hallam, the woman whose rape allegations were the spark that ignited the riot, later admitted that she fabricated her story. That said, however, the riot did have at least one positive result. In February of 1909, partially in response to the Springfield race riot, a group of black and white social activists, including W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Mary White Ovington, came together to sign a document known as "the call" that laid the foundation for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). This organization fought racial prejudice and violence and worked to make political and social equality a reality for African Americans into the twenty-first century.

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